Chemical CSP storage system based on a manganese aluminium spinel

Chemical storage systems are a promising innovative route to overcome the issue of the solar irradiation storage, resulting as cost effective and with high energy density. A main problem with these kinds of materials is to design a synthesis method for preparing stable reactive structures, presenting at the same time a high volumetric charging/discharging enthalpy. At this purpose, a size controlled spinel was produced, characterized and investigated regarding its thermophysical and kinetics properties. The obtained powder presents an average diameter between 100 and 200 µm and an energy density of 133 J/g and an experimental test was carried out to verify the spinel morphology stability under thermal cycles. The specific heat is similar to other structured chemical storage system and makes the spinel feasible to be used also as sensible accumulation medium. Despite the relatively high particles size, and the expected small exposed reactive area, the charging, and especially discharging reaction rates resulted particularly favourable and comparable with the reported behaviour of micrometric powders. The particularly simple preparation method plus the cost effectiveness of the precursors leads to a quite convenient expected cost for the storage material, absolutely similar to commercially available accumulation systems. © 2020 International Solar Energy Society